Think you know Japanese food?  If you think Japanese food is just raw fish, noddles and rice, well you better think again. The food is as diverse as the culture.  I lived in japan for 10 years and only scratched the surface as to what was available to satisfy my stomach and taste buds.

All over the country people are constantly cooking up new healthy delicious dishes.  Hundreds of gourmet treats come and go, some starting out as a local favorite and then take hold in the larger cities . Occasionally a food fad will last, or maybe the nation grows to love a local delicacy over a period of years.

When you live in Japan long term you discover that most of the food is tastey, healthy and not at all unusual.    You don’t even need to be a fan of mainstream Japanese cuisine to eat well in Japan. There are many delicacies that may strike you as extreme cuisine, and require the adventures type to try them.  If you remain open taste budded and eat them at every opportunity eventually  your palate will  attune to the full range of tastes and textures found in these food. Only then can you enjoy and experience  surely the world’s most diverse culinary culture.

In my ten years in Japan I would occassionally find myself staring at some bowl of cold muck  thinking, “I’m not sure I can eat this,”. I would remind myself that each dish is a survivor of a merciless process of food selection. If it is good enough for Japanese, then it is good enough for me. Some of the more unusually foods I have eaten include raw horse meat, baby wasps, whale, fish eyes and sea urchin.